Why Your Wedding Needs Structure

Every wedding is special, and every couple wants their wedding to be individual. This is only right, and of course the wedding feels completely unique to the people closely involved in it.

You can have a wedding that’s different, in a venue of your own choosing. You can devise specific ways of dressing, of the order of your wedding ceremony, of how your guests participate in it.

However, regardless of how unique you want your wedding to be, it must have one key quality, that all weddings should have: structure.

What does Structure mean for Your Wedding?

There are certain essential elements to a wedding which you need to plan properly. These include the venue, or venues, the ceremony itself and the celebration following it.

However spontaneous you feel, as a couple, about each other, your wedding day is not a spontaneous event. Of course, it’s to celebrate your love, but to work as a celebration, you must plan it.

The good news is, this doesn’t have to be wildly complicated. It’s about understanding what the key events of the day will be, where they’ll be, and who will be involved in them.

Be sure of one this, however: do not leave anything to chance.

Typically, a wedding structure will look like this: guests gather at the place for the ceremony with the bride and groom – typically the bride arrives last of all.

You have the ceremony where you exchange vows. Then, if the reception is at a separate venue, you go there and have a wedding breakfast or similar meal.

There are speeches, toasts and the cutting of the cake. There’s probably a bit of a knees-up. There might then be an evening reception, depending on the time of day of the wedding itself.

Structure and Storytelling

Your wedding day is a story, and to tell that story requires structure. As a wedding videographer, this is also what I require, to capture your special day on film.

Yes, there’s a documentary quality to it, but creating the narrative of your wedding on film involves far more than pointing a camera and shooting footage.

It’s about capturing the emotional peaks while finding space for other, more spontaneous meaningful moments. To do this I need to know what will happen when, and who will be doing it.

In other words, your wedding day’s structure is what forms the basis for my film of your story.

My experience is that while there are spontaneous moments during a wedding, which I endeavour to get onto film, weddings cannot run themselves spontaneously. They need a degree of order and careful planning. As your wedding videographer, you should share these plans with me, in advance.

Like I said earlier, this doesn’t mean making your wedding some identikit version – it’s still about you and your love. But you do need to know which bits go where, so that the whole thing hangs together on the day.

My name’s Paul and I’m a Manchester-based wedding filmmaker. I specialise in wedding videography and I film weddings in Manchester, Lancashire and across the North West. I tell wedding stories based on the mood and emotion of the day and on how the wedding flows. Contact me about your wedding plans, and let me make your wedding memories come alive on film.

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Manchester Wedding Videography

I tell love stories on film, making your wedding that much more memorable, so that you can relive your wedding day and share your love. I cover Manchester, Cheshire, Lancashire and the North West but can work further afield on request, including destination weddings abroad.